Digital Technologies Are Key to Governing Robots and Drones

Digital Technologies Are Key to Governing Robots and Drones

Apr 04, 2021It would certainly be an understatement to say there are many exciting things afoot in the technology realm. There has been a tectonic shift throughout the last decade, with many emerging technologies making their presence felt, most notably involving robotics, drones, blockchain and artificial intelligence. While each technology is important in its own right, I would like to specifically focus on robotics and drones in this column.

Throughout the last few years, there have been significant strides made in the robotics and drones space that have resulted in these devices becoming increasingly smart, collaborative and mobile. Recent developments in ROS and FlytOS to Distributed ROS have made it possible for such machines to not only collaborate better, but also make more informed decisions. The advent of 5G will only aid real-time data transfer, thus enabling even faster decision making by such devices.

The development and affordability of many required sensors, like LIDAR, magnetometers, high-resolution cameras and servo motors, along with advancements on the software side, particularly in deep learning and image analytics, will enable robots and drones to make more intelligent, autonomous and real-time mission-critical decisions. As a result, these devices are now moving from being expensive and experimentative toys to legitimate machines that can solve real-world challenges in several industry segments. A few examples are:

• Industrial and Manufacturing: Robots can help to expedite assembly lines and increase output.
• Agriculture: Drones can help farmers with such tasks as monitoring farms, spraying pesticides, and detecting animals’ locations and movements.
• Pandemics and Calamities: During pandemic outbreaks and other calamities, drones and robots can play a substantial role in arial sanitization, monitoring public spaces and facilitating appropriate social-distancing norms.
• Surveillance and Safety: Robots and drones are being increasingly used for security and surveillance. They can also utilize computer vision to provide real-time alerts regarding possible intrusions or break-ins into homes, offices or industrial plants.
• Warehouse and Material Handling: Smart robots are now replacing automated guided vehicles in warehouses for material transportation and handling, as they can easily identify goods and also move around warehouses while avoiding obstacles.
• Last-Mile Delivery: With beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) technology, robots and drones can facilitate last-mile delivery, which has always been an expensive part of the supply chain and delivery ecosystem.
• Retail Stores: Robots can make an impact across the value chain, from assisting customers with their shopping experience to inventory management and integration via ERP systems.

The Consequences of Unregulated Technologies
While the potential of these technologies is undeniable, it is important to understand the infrastructure and regulatory frameworks required to facilitate their optimal use. There have been several instances of players acting in bad faith who have disrupted public utilities or infrastructure. For instance, if we look only at airports, there have been several examples of operations being impacted by unsafe and unregulated drone activity.

London’s second-busiest airport, Gatwick Airport, was  severely disrupted due to drone sightings on three consecutive days. This resulted in schedules of more than 700 flights going into disarray during the extremely busy Christmas season. Similarly, more than  43 flights were put on hold and nine were diverted at New Jersey’s Newark Airport, due to two drones operating at 3,500 feet nearby. Incidents like these have also been  reported at Singapore’s Changi airport.

Digital-First Regulatory Frameworks Are the Need of the Hour
Clearly, there’s a need to build a regulatory framework that is digitally architected, scalable, robust and secure so it can be deployed quickly and accessed easily by an ecosystem’s various constituents. A digital-first mindset is essential in seamlessly bringing together the different moving parts required to create the necessary public infrastructure and policies that accelerate the possibilities fuelled by drones and robotics.

For instance, India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation has instituted a platform called  Digital Sky, which is intended to regulate the operations of drones in that country. This enables drones that have registered with the platform and have the “no permission, no takeoff” (NPNT) protocol to fly in airspaces demarcated as green zones (free airspace) and yellow zones (controlled airspace).

As drones or robots becoming increasingly accessible, there will be a great uptick in the amount of data generated by their usage. Being able to sift through this information to extract intelligent insights will be key to optimizing the user experience, recognizing security loopholes and more accurately predicting malicious incidents. Toward this end, advanced analytics can be combined with a privacy-by-design approach to ensure that all data related to machines and their operators is secure.

An Ecosystem Designed to Regulate, Not Limit
Lastly, as we approach a future that will see drones and robots become quickly ubiquitous, it becomes important to take a humane approach in designing an ecosystem that is technology-friendly, is open to change and fosters new ideas. Such a system would be able to have an end-to-end view that recognizes the good actors from the bad and is cognizant toward the needs of the varied ecosystem players. The future will most certainly be delivered by drones and robots, but it is about time we start building out the frameworks and platforms that will control these machines in our skies and our homes.

Ritesh Gupta is the VP and CTO of product engineering services at  Happiest Minds Technologies. In this role, he is responsible for leveraging disruptive technologies to help clients create future-ready products and platforms. He is closely involved in the company’s Solutions and IP program, which requires him to work with clients in defining their product roadmaps. In a career spanning almost 23 years, Ritesh has worked in several areas and is keenly invested in technologies like machine learning, cloud computing, satellite communications, computer vision, robotics and drones. He continues to be passionate about leveraging technology to help create measurable business value.

Published at Sun, 04 Apr 2021 11:03:15 +0000

4 Ways AI Technology Will Speed Up Your Photo Editing

Editing photographs you have captured is equally as important as actually making them. When you snap something you are hardly done with the whole thing. You have only captured something and now you have a digital copy of it, but the real job starts once you begin to edit it and bring it more to life. 

Photographers and editors far and wide know the value of a good photo and how much time editing it can take. Therefore, they usually look for the best software to use and help their case. And there is hardly anything better these days than AI technology when the right kind of efficiency and speed in photo editing are concerned.

This article contains all the information you will need about the best ways in which artificial intelligence can help you and speed up the process of editing. If you wish to find out even more on the matter we highly advise you to check out DVDFab Photo Enhancer AI. 

About AI in General

Chances are you already know what AI or artificial intelligence is. It has been around for years in many other industries and on various platforms, all of which are far better off now that they have it. AI is basically machine learning, or the ability of technology made up of software and hardware that can learn certain things and use them on its own later. In certain scenarios it makes much more sense than traditional way of performing tasks by humans. 

In other cases, it speeds things up because over time the technology learns the patterns and picks new things up, calculates them and becomes able to anticipate them. A lot of it is actually forecasting based on a library and inventory of the already learned and examined processes. The more input the software gets over time the more intelligent it will become. Before long you will only have to feed it the bare minimum of data and it will spit out a finished product on its own. 

AI and automation are often mistaken for one and the same thing but they are actually quite different. The process of automation is simply introducing technology and innovative software to the processes in order to keep up with the time. The systems become better in every sort of way since new tech is now available. AI on the other hand gives that same, and new tech, near absolute independence. Automation require manually set parameters in order for the sequences to happen, while AI does it on its own. 

The Ways It Helps

Let us now determine in what ways AI tech really helps in the editing of photographs and its speed.

1. More Work at Once

One of the things those working with photos hate the most is when they have large batches of similar edits on their plate that they have to complete in a short period of time. In such scenarios, having a software that can easily notice the similarities and react to them accordingly goes a long way. The more similar photos you load up the quicker the next one will be analyzed. You may even be able to change the default settings based on the details the software has scanned and start with much of the picture already edited.

2. Custom and Preexisting Tools at Hand

As someone who edits photos for a living, or at least as a main hobby and part-time job, you probably have your go-to settings and changes. What is more, they may vary from format to format or based on the type of picture. For example, if you usually take high resolution snaps of scenery that is one type. When you take macro snaps of objects, that is another.

Pictures of food should be differently edited than those of people. Well, the artificial intelligence in your editing software knows this and therefore it gives you suggestions and options as soon as you start editing and start your next project. As mentioned, the more you do of the same thing the quicker it will pick up your most used tools and track the time you spend with each thing. Then, next time around, it will already pick the things for you and it will reflect in a faster completed project.

3. It Saves Money

How can it save money, we hear you ask? Well, this is not applicable to everyone but rather those who do not have enough time to edit all of their work so them must employ third-party editors or hire more editors to help. AI will take over for you and it will render and edit parts of every photo for you before you even get to it. It will take some time until it is able to do this much but eventually it will get there and you will feel like the work is being done for you and yet you will still be all by your lonesome. Never going over the budget again is the most important part of trying to save up for new ways in which you can expand your business.

4. Simple Edits Become Almost Non-Existent

For the very same reason we mentioned multiple times above, the simplest of projects you have to perform will be done in mere minutes. In any type of work people are usually fed up with the smallest of tasks because you have to spend time doing something so little (and often cheap) when you can be focusing your time and effort on something far more important. Well, since you will be editing in numerous ways and with a wide variety of tools, the software will utilize its machine learning capabilities and learn the ways in which easier tasks are done. Simple edits will be finished in a near instant and you will actually have more time on your hands for the things you deem important. 

Conclusion

These are just four of the most important ways in which an AI editing software for photographs can help you speed up tour work, satisfy more clients, and have more revenue at the end of the day. How much more convincing do you need to finally get along with the times and get yourself this incredible software?

Published at Sun, 04 Apr 2021 10:07:30 +0000